prompt

Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?#

response

I think the word “community” is thrown around way too much by the new media crowd. It seems like the new word used to gloat about how many followers you have. I don’t consider myself to be a part of a community, and I don’t necessarily plan to.

prompt

What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?#

response

I help make the internet. The last bit of it that I made was I Am The, a ripoff of another site I saw and thought sucked. I went into it knowing that it involved a number of problems that I didn’t know how to solve, and I was able to figure them out. I was pretty proud of it.

My next project is about 20 times as large, 20 times as complicated, and I have even less idea about how to implement it. Last night I bought a new domain name* to test it out on, and new server space over at Linode. Setting up that server alone was an incredible accomplishment for me (I’ve always been with HostMonster and only used their cPanel interface to set everything up…I’m ashamed to say that I know very little about webhosting), but I can’t take full credit for it; Linode has so many tutorials and step-by-step guides that they essentially hold your hand through the setup process. I’ve never used the command line cumulatively as much as I did last night. It feels like such an amazing accomplishment when you set up your own server, install your own LAMP on it, and see Apache’s default “It’s working!” page live on the internet. It’s an even bigger sense of accomplishment when you point your domain’s nameservers to your new IP and see it rendering the content you just added via SSH.

Holy balls, I geeked out hard last night.

* All 4 letter (not character) dot coms were taken in 2007, and there’s a good chance that somewhere near 99% of all 4 character (includes hyphens and numbers) are taken. My new domain is a 4 character dot com, and it isn’t gibberish. It has a 3 letter word followed by a number. And I only payed $10 for it. I can’t even tell you how stoked I am for getting that. Somebody had previously owned it, and let it expire…yesterday. I found it on an expired domain names list, and immediately snatched it up. Hell yes.

prompt

response

I let go of photography. I’ve been busy, and I’m forced to be indoors during the only 40 hours of sunlight during the weekdays. To commemorate the loss, here are some photos I took around the Bear Canyon hiking trail yesterday.